Pairing assets
The asset a launch is priced in, paid in, and settled in — chosen once, at launch.
What the choice decides
A launch’s pairing asset is what its curve raises, what its graduated pool is paired against, and what its fees and dividends are paid in. It is fixed at launch and cannot be changed.
A new launch may be paired against USDC or against one of the stock tokens we have added. What a launch already opened against stays tradable regardless of what is offered later.
Stock pairs, bridged from Robinhood
A launch can be paired against a stock. The stock does not originate here: Robinhood issues it as a token on Robinhood Chain, backed by shares Robinhood holds, and our bridge brings that token to Arc. We lock the Robinhood token in a vault on Robinhood Chain and mint an equal amount of an Arc wrapper; redeeming burns the wrapper and releases the Robinhood token. So pairing a launch against CRCL means its curve raises the bridged Robinhood CRCL token and its pool trades against it.
Two limits hold at once: the wrapper’s supply can never exceed what is locked behind it, and it can never exceed what Robinhood has issued. Bridging charges a fee, fixed when the bridge is deployed and not raisable afterwards. Pausing the bridge stops minting and redeeming; it does not stop the wrapper trading, because launches are paired against it and a launch must never stop trading because a bridge did.
Two parties hold something on your behalf, and neither is us. Robinhood holds the shares and issues the token against them; our vault holds that token and issues the wrapper against it. If Robinhood pauses its token or stops honouring it, the wrapper keeps trading on Arc but cannot be turned back into anything — and no contract of ours can change that.
Buying with USDC either way
Whatever a launch is paired with, you can always pay in USDC. Where they differ, the trade panel converts as part of the same transaction. You may also pay in the pairing asset directly if you hold it.
Curve shape is per asset
The curve’s tuning knob is set per pairing asset, because the same nominal number means something entirely different in dollars than in a tokenised bitcoin. It is also adjusted as an asset’s own price moves, so a launch raises comparable value whichever pair it opens on.
A change only reaches launches opened afterwards. An existing launch keeps the curve it opened with, forever.
Two USDC decimals on Arc
Worth knowing if you are reading raw values: on Arc the native gas USDC has 18 decimals while the ERC-20 interface at 0x3600…0000 has 6. Everything the curve computes is normalised to 18 and converted back at the edges; token transfers move raw units. Numbers shown in the interface are already converted.
A pairing asset is somebody else’s token — Circle’s, for USDC, and Robinhood’s for every stock. Either can pause it or make it non-transferable. If that happens to the asset a launch is paired with, that launch’s trading, fees, dividends and graduation can all stop, and nobody — including us — can override it.
What a figure is denominated in
Market caps, volumes and dollar values shown in the interface are converted to dollars from the pairing asset using a price we sample on chain. An asset we cannot price shows blanks rather than a guess.